I relegate this note to the end of the volume, because its introduction into the body of the work would have been too great an interruption of the continuity of the narrative.

A little comparative history may add to the interest of the picture which the Prätigäu presents. In that valley, as in many others in Switzerland, the peasants are ready to give so high a price for an acre of land that large properties have become impossible; that is to say, there cannot be, as the general rule, any proprietors in localities so circumstanced excepting peasants. In England, however, where an acre of agricultural land does not sell for more than, or for as much as, half of what an acre sells for in these valleys, there are no peasant proprietors. Here, notwithstanding the cheapness of land, it is the small properties that have become impossible, and the general rule is that there can be none but large proprietors. The difference is diametrical. Can it in any way be accounted for?

The question suggested to us is, How has it come about that, while the peasant proprietors have extinguished the large proprietors in the Prätigäu, the large proprietors have extinguished the peasant proprietors in England? As respects the case of the former there can be no difficulty in seeing that, if the peasant cultivators will give more for land than those who would buy for investment could afford to give, then those who would buy for investment must disappear from the market, and that already existing large properties will gradually melt away under the action of this solvent. As respects ourselves the answer usually given is that the land in this country is too dear for peasant proprietors. This supposition, however, as I have just noticed, is the very reverse of the fact. In Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland, and in parts of Germany and of Italy peasant proprietors give a great deal more for land than it would cost them in England. It may, therefore, be true that in England the cheapness of land has been one of the conditions that has contributed to the formation of large estates; but it is quite impossible to maintain that in this country the dearness of agricultural land has extinguished the class of peasant proprietors, because here the price of land, so far from being an obstacle to the existence of the class, has presented, and at this moment presents, quite exceptionally favourable conditions for its maintenance and increase.

Can any other reason be alleged? In the Chapter to which this note is appended I have pointed out that the English agricultural labourer does not possess the knowledge and the habits of thought and life, which are indispensable in a peasant proprietor. They are indispensable in him, because they it is that enable him to live as a peasant proprietor. This, if it be true, must be a serious impediment to the re-establishment of the class amongst us, but cannot be regarded as the primary cause of its extinction, because Englishmen were as capable as other people of this knowledge and of these habits. What was really and primarily in fault was not the decay of this knowledge and of these habits, but that which engendered and brought about this decay amongst us alone of all people.

If, then, the cause is neither in the present price of land here, nor in any inherent incapacity in Englishmen, that is to say, if it be neither in the land, nor in the men, where else can we look for it? There remains no other direction in which we can look but law, and the interpretation of law. In the Middle Ages we had the peasant class of those times fully developed here. There were in this country, as was perhaps the case everywhere then, variations in the possessions and rights of the class, but still at that time peasant proprietors pretty generally, if not quite universally, formed the basis of the English village community. Why did they cease to do so? I think the answer is that in this country, from a combination of exceptional causes, legislation and the interpretation of law and custom became adverse to the maintenance of the class. The exceptional causes were, first, the strength of the governing class (locally represented by Lords of manors), which was a consequence of the Norman conquest; and the great rise in the money value of cheese, hides, and wool, especially the last, consequent on the influx of silver from the New World during the sixteenth century, while for the production of these articles the climate, and for their export the easily traversed surface of the country, nowhere far from the coast, and numerous excellent harbours offered pre-eminent advantages. There was, therefore, both a strong motive for the extinction of peasant properties, and power sufficient for effecting it. Peasant properties, which everywhere implied rights of appurtenant common pasturage, made the formation of large runs for numerous flocks of sheep, or for a large combination of cattle breeding with arable culture, impossible. They were, therefore, apparently in the interests of the community, gradually rendered valueless to their owners, absorbed, and extinguished. This process, though it commenced at an earlier date, was chiefly carried out in the reign of Elizabeth. Events in this matter only took the direction and course which might have been expected.

But it is clear that if the right of the peasant to maintain himself from the produce of a piece of land which he himself cultivates for the support of his family is abrogated, he must either cease to exist, and then the cultivation of the land would be impossible, or he must be maintained in some other way. For centuries wages, the alternative method, were not universally, or even generally, sufficient for this purpose. The operations of agriculture were not at that time as continuous as they are now; the demand for any amount of agricultural produce was not as unfailing as it is now; and the farmer had not access to such stores of capital as exist now. Under these circumstances the alternative was insufficient. What then was to be done? How was the existence of the peasant to be maintained? He could not be allowed the hide of plough land and the common pasturage rights of his forefathers, for these were obstacles to the formation of sheep farms, and to large culture; nor could wages be relied on continuously. The method hit upon showed the inventiveness of the English mind quite as much as any one of the many institutions and discoveries for which the world is indebted to the inhabitants of this island. It was to give to the dispossessed peasantry, who were henceforth to become agricultural labourers, a claim on the parishes, in which they resided and laboured, to the amount requisite for the support of themselves and of their families, when through failure of work or of wages, through sickness or age, they became incapable of supporting themselves.

Three centuries ago this was the rationale of the English poor law, and it is so at this day. It was a substitute for peasant proprietorship, and it aided in utterly extinguishing it. If a little bit of land is the only means of supporting the life of a family, the family will, however great the cost in labour, support itself by this means. But if you make wages, supplemented by a claim on the produce of the land, an alternative means; and at the same time bring into play causes which shall partly dispose, and partly drive, the peasantry to accept this alternative; they will accept it, and peasant proprietorship will cease. This I think is in a few words the explanation of the unique fact that in this country there is no class of peasant proprietors. Our legislation favoured the consolidation and accumulation of large estates. It did not favour the maintenance of peasant properties: with respect to them its action and pressure were in the opposite direction; while at the same time it gave the peasants an alternative means of support. The tendency of events, and the pressure of circumstances were irresistible; and the whole class either became disposed, or was driven, to accept the alternative; and so the class of peasant proprietors was utterly extinguished. Had circumstances, legislation, and the interpretation the law put on the rights of the class favoured its maintenance in this country, we should have had here a peasant class similar to that of Switzerland, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and other countries. The existence here of exceptional conditions had an exceptional issue.

The extinction of the class has been followed by many large and important consequences. Of these the most obvious is the difference between the class that has been introduced as the basis of our social system, that of agricultural labourers, and the class that was extinguished, that of peasant proprietors. No greater difference can exist between men. Peasant proprietors in their industry, tenacity, and stability have just the qualities which might have fitted them for constituting an useful element in the foundation of so artificial and ill-balanced a social fabric as that of England, for as to their narrowness of view, their chief defect of character, that in so rich a community would have been of little detriment in any way; and besides, too, in this country we must compare what their narrowness would have been with the far greater narrowness of our agricultural labourers. On the other side agricultural labourers are a very poor foundation for the social fabric, and most especially in a commercial and manufacturing community, which already from these sources has a dangerously numerous prolétariat. As a class they are improvident, thriftless, shiftless, have no sense of self-dependence, and not much of self-respect, their self-acting effectual education having been that which results from the teaching of wages, supplemented by a poor law.

The question of peasant proprietorship, as now discussed among ourselves, is generally restricted to economical considerations. It is asked, as if this contained the whole question, whether the economical results of peasant culture are as satisfactory, acre for acre, as those of large farms? This, though an important part of the question, is not the whole of it: perhaps it is not the chief part of it. The character of the basis of our social fabric may be a matter of more consequence to the nation than even the amount of produce per acre. It will explain what is contained in this remark, if I say that I suppose that everybody would think that to admit to our parliamentary constituency a million voters, whose sentiments and ideas were in the main those of peasant proprietors, would be a less hazardous operation than to admit a million pauperized agricultural labourers, who, possibly, might endeavour to use the franchise for the purpose of securing a more liberal administration of the poor law. And, practically, there would be some justification for such an attempt, if made by them, for the poor law may be regarded historically as the compensation given to their class for the extinction of commonable rights in the land, and, together with those commonable rights, of peasant properties; for it is clear that if those common rights, and the associated peasant properties, had been retained, there would so far have been no occasion for a poor law.

It is obvious that the improvidence and misery of our agricultural labourers have for many generations given us a large supply of labour for building up our manufacturing and commercial establishments, and for peopling the New World, and our Australian and other colonies. The same cause may also have enabled us to maintain our military force by voluntary enlistment. But as the same amount of land in the hands of peasant proprietors maintains four or five times as large an agricultural population as it does when cultivated by hired labourers, it is quite possible that we might have received even a better supply from the alternative system. At all events, now, in consequence of a largely increased demand for men, contemporaneously with an actual decrease of our relatively small agricultural population, which under existing circumstances is our chief nursery for recruits for all purposes, we are beginning to be pressed hard for men. We are now suffering from a want of men, and would be glad if there were some element in our agrarian system which made that ingredient of our population far more considerable than it now is. Another evil consequence, then, of a mistake made three hundred years ago has begun to manifest itself.

The price of labour is closely connected with its supply, insomuch that it may be argued that if a system has hitherto produced an abundant supply it must also have lowered its cost. It is obvious, however, to remark that the value of labour depends not so much on the amount of wages that are paid, as on the amount and character of work that is done. This is so much the case that it has come to be regarded as a general rule that holds good all over the world, that labour is least productive where wages are lowest; and there have been some who have thought that this might have been said in their proportion of our agricultural labourers. As a matter of fact, however, wages have been higher in this than in neighbouring countries. Nor, in estimating the cost of our labour, would it be allowable to leave out of our calculation the amount of our poor rate. That has for centuries been raised for the purpose of supplementing wages, and so is practically a part of the wages of the labouring class, levied on the owners of land and houses. By the way, we often hear this limitation of the incidence of the poor rate complained of; but if our account of the rationale of the origin and action of the poor law be correct, it may be questioned whether the incidence of the rate ought not, in rural districts, to have been restricted entirely to land, because the motive of the law was to enable large estates to be formed, and to be cultivated by a poorly paid class of labourers, who for many generations were by the law tied to the land they cultivated.

Another consequence of the obliteration of the class of peasant proprietors, which is well worthy of notice on account of its wide and deep effects, is that it has prevented the price of every acre of agricultural land in the country from rising beyond half the sum it would now have reached had this class continued to exist amongst us. In far poorer countries than England peasants will gladly give for such land twice as much as is its market price here. If we had this class here, its members would do the same here. But, as this class has been eliminated here, those, who in this country purchase land as an investment for capital, have it all their own way. The class who would bid twice as much for the land as the capitalist now gets it for does not exist amongst us. The consequence is that he buys his land cheap, very cheap indeed. This will be seen, if what he gets for his money is compared with what other people get for theirs when it is put into consols. The latter get a little more than 3 per cent. with some prospect of depreciation of the capital, and with a certainty in these days of depreciation in the purchasing power of the 3 per cent. interest. The capitalist, however, who invests in land gets for the present a little less than 3 per cent., but besides this immediate percentage he gets the safest of all investments, plus the most improving in the long run of all investments, plus the social and political status the possession of land confers, plus several minor advantages. Investors, therefore, in land in this country have no reason to complain of the price they give for their land, or of what they get for their money.

For this they are indebted to the extinction amongst us of the class of peasant proprietors. Just as the people who buy ships are the people who want ships for the business they understand and are engaged in, and the people who buy factories are those who want factories for the business they understand and are engaged in, and those who buy stock in trade of any kind are those who understand and are engaged in the trade for which the stock they purchase is necessary, so those who are most eager to buy land are those who understand how to get a living out of the land by the application to it of their own labour. They are the class, who may be regarded as, par excellence, the natural purchasers of land. This class, however, has in this country been extinguished. The market, therefore, has been completely cleared for those who would wish to purchase land as an investment, and they, under the present condition of things amongst us, are limited to those who are able to invest largely, or who buy with the view of adding their purchases to properties that are already large. They, therefore, in buying land have it all their own way; and this is the reason why they get their land at a price which yields an immediate return of something less than 3 per cent., plus many other valuable considerations. If the peasant proprietor class existed here to such an extent as to effectually compete with them, they would have to give a price that would not yield 1¹⁄₂ per cent. for agricultural land. They do, then, get their land very cheap, which is a result, perhaps one that was not originally foreseen, of the action during three centuries of our poor law. The extinction of the class of peasant proprietors has thus very effectively aided the practice of settling and charging estates in bringing about the large agglomerations of landed property, together with all the resultant peculiarities, which distinguish our agrarian system from that of any other country.

But if those who buy land get it at half its value, those who sell it get for it only half of what they otherwise would. This suggests the question whether it would be better for the country that the value of the agricultural land of the United Kingdom should be doubled? This may be answered by the question whether it is not better for us to have land at its present price of say 60l. an acre, than it would be to have it at 30l.? If 60l. is better than 30l., then I suppose 120l. would be better than 60l.

The facts and considerations that have been now referred to may throw some light on a question of which a great deal has been heard lately—that of what is called tenant rights. It may, of course, be asked whether the progress of time has endowed tenants with any new rights? How can the tenants of to-day have rights of which the tenants of yesterday had no conception? Or, to speak broadly, can a tenant, as a tenant, have any right except that of entering into a contract with a landowner, and of invoking the law for the enforcement of the provisions of his contract? But if it were answered that time can give him no new rights, and that he can have no rights but those for which he contracts, still what is really meant by the question would not be settled. By a process of legislation the land of the country having been formed into estates of such dimensions that their owners cannot possibly cultivate them, and small proprietors having been extinguished, the tenants are now presented to us as the only producers of food for the community. Under these circumstances the question arises whether it would not be for the advantage of the community that the position of the tenants should be so improved as to lead to their investing more money than they can at present with safety in the cultivation of the soil, that is to say to their producing a great deal more food for the community? This improvement in the tenants’ position can be conceded only at the cost of the existing legal rights of the landowners, and can be refused only at the cost of the imprescriptible natural rights of the community; for of such a character is the right of the community to the greatest amount of food the soil of the country can be made to yield. This is in a sense the highest of all rights, for it is the right of a community to existence. It was in the name, and for the sake, of this right that under the conditions of past times the rights of individual proprietorship, which were not primeval, were first conceded. They had become necessary for the cultivation of the soil, and, therefore, were allowed to be established at the expense of the previously existing common rights. In this view tenant rights are not rights which the tenants can claim in law, but rights which it may be supposed belong to the community, and the concession of which to the tenants the community may demand for the general advantage, it may be even for the general safety. The two years’ notice which the present Premier is said to regard with favour is precisely a concession of this kind. It is a curtailment of the rights of the landowners, to which the tenants can have no legal, or rightful, claim: it is, however, a concession which, presumably, would promote the advantage of the public, and which, therefore, public policy may require. If improvements of this kind in the position of the tenants would increase the produce of the country by one half, then that addition of a half to the produce of the country is exactly the weight of the argument in favour of the concession of tenant rights so called: to endow the tenants with these rights would add, every year, one hundred million pounds’ worth of food to the produce of this country, that is to say to the subsistence of the community.

This list of the consequences of the working for three centuries of our English poor law might be greatly increased; for instance, the division of the people it has helped to bring about into a comparatively small class who are very rich and a very large class who have not, and never can have, any real property, accounts for the elsewhere unheard of demands that are made on the charity of the small class, and which demands are complied with because of their obvious necessity. Again also the great bulk of the agricultural land of the kingdom being held in large estates—a result in part of the working of the same law—the owners of these large estates can afford to spend no inconsiderable part of the rent of the whole kingdom in London, which to a very appreciable extent accounts for the vastness of London. The poorness, and almost meanness of life in our provincial towns are also to be accounted for by a reference to the same fact. The rent of the land around these towns is not spent in them, but in London or elsewhere: at all events the adjacent landowners rarely live in, or contribute anything towards the embellishment of the life of, these towns. Enough, however, has been said to show that the endowment and establishment of pauperism, as an integral part of the British constitution, as much so as the Crown, or the Peerage, has had very extensive effects. It could not have been otherwise, for it was the elimination from the constitution of society, as far as the mass of the people were concerned, of the old elements of self-dependence and property, and the substitution in their place of dependence and of public doles. These were new conditions to which all the arrangements of society in their endless ramifications had to accommodate and adjust themselves, and to which the future progress of society had to conform.

The course of events, then, taking the words in their widest sense, is what has given to the Prätigäu its ten thousand peasant proprietors, and it is what has extinguished the class amongst ourselves. If the course of events affecting each of us had been interchanged their condition might have been witnessed in this country, and our condition might have been theirs. Whether it be possible in these days, in the face of emigration, of high wages, of settled estates, of the demoralization of the agricultural labourer, and of a poor law, to recover the lost class may well be doubted. But however that may be, it cannot be good policy to maintain any artificial, that is to say any legislative, obstacles in the way of the reappearance amongst us of the class, if that be possible, any more than it can be to maintain any arrangements that might be having the effect of hindering capital from being employed on the largest scale, and to the greatest profitable amount per acre, in increasing the produce of the soil. Food-factories, of at least 1,000 acres each, appear to be a natural result of the combination of capital and science now possible. Let us, therefore, have a clear stage for these. That, however, is no reason why we should not at the same time have a clear stage for peasant proprietors also. Let nothing be done with the view of favouring and nursing either one or the other, but at the same time let nothing be maintained that is a hindrance to the existence of either. There appears to be no ground for supposing that our present land-system favours either; it may not, however, be equally beyond controversy that it is not a hindrance to both.